“I am afraid that this will result in civil war as happened in Kenya in 2007, when nationwide violence broke out because of a botched election count. Can this happen here?
by Ducky Paredes
I am truly concerned. It seems to me that the 2010 elections will be the biggest man-made catastrophe ever in the history of the Philippines. It is a disaster in the making and puts forward the question: Does any one in the Commission on Elections (Comelec) know what the Comelec is doing.
The plan is to spend P11.3 billion on automation at almost the precinct level. (There are about 240,000 precincts. Bigger precincts – 80,000 0f them – will be created.) There will be one Precinct Count Optical Scanner in each of these larger precincts – 80,000 PCOS! The present plan is that the voter himself will deliver his filled ballot and personally feed it into the scanner which will automatically place the ballot in the ballot box.
The scanner then delivers the data gathered to a computer for tabulation.
Does that sound like a brilliant idea? It does not and the idea is actually pretty dumb. Why? By allowing voters to get near the machine, this makes it very easy for anyone to stop the voting by, say, putting a bubble gum on the ballot (or a thick paste or a chemical concoction that will coat the lens of the scanner).
That will cause election failure for close to a thousand voters. Imagine if one can gum up a hundred of these machines in a province or a municipality?
Besides, if one is thinking of dispatching 80,000 machines, where would one store these as they are being programmed for the elections in so many municipalities, each with its own set of local candidates? Will they be secure and safe or can unscrupulous politicians somehow find ways to compromise them to produce election results to the liking of that politico?
Is there electricity in all of these far-off places where many of the machines will be situated? Don’t we always have stories of the electricity suddenly and mysteriously failing just when the voting is going on? Why should things be any different in 2010?
Then, the results will be sent via SMS – yes, by texting using cellphones – to the Comelec. This is an idea that has always failed. The Namfrel has been trying to get SMS technology working in reporting the results and, eachelection, it never really works. Why? On election day, the SMS traffic is about as busy as Christmas Day, Valentine’s or New Year when everyone and his brother are sending each other greetings. In the case of elections, the news mediaand politicians and others are busy with their cellphones, too.
A study done by Ateneo University engineering students on failed text messaging shows that the SMS has a failure rate of a low of two to a high of ten percent on regular days when the traffic is normal. That is two to ten messages out of a hundred that are sent but never received. And, the Comelec would rely on this technology for the official reporting of the election results? How certain are they that some smart politicians will not be sending false results of their own encoded in the Comelec’s own cipher?
The codes have to be given to personnel manning the machines and, from the experience in the ARMM elections, each of the 80,000 machines will have at least five persons tending to it? Is it too far-fetched an idea that several of these 400,000 persons will be careless with their codes?
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What will spell disaster is actually the mere fact that 80,000 machines – scanners sitting atop a ballot box and connected to a computer that will tabulate the result – will be deployed. Imagine if some warlord steals the machines and the ballots, fills these out and relays the results to the Comelec. Those become the official results in his area.
How safe will these machines be in some of our more remote areas, or even in the center of our main cities where gangs and goons operate?
It is already a logistical nightmare just to accept and account for the shipment of 80,000 machines. Imagine also preparing each of them for a particular area with the names of each candidate encoded in the machines. Then, one has to ship them out to different destinations. Then, one has to tend to them during the voting and retrieve them after election day. But, wait, there is even one last step more. The machines have to be returned to the owner.
You see, the P11.3 billion will not buy any voting machine. The Comelec would only be renting them at that price which will already cost P200 per voter, the most expensive automated voting ever for the country!
In 1996, 42 Automated Counting Machines (ACM) were purchased for the ARMM elections at a cost of P50 million or P38.43 per voter. (These machines did not perform; they failed to read the ballots which had to be counted manually, after all.)
In 1998, again for the ARMM, the Comelec bought another 28 of the same machines from the same supplier. Of course, they –- again — did not perform well, at all, at a cost of P50.48 per voter.
In 2004, 2,000 ACMs were purchased at a cost of P1.3 billion (together with transmission equipment). These were certified as working by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) but were prevented from being used by the Supreme Court. These would have delivered the results within 36 hours after the close of elections at a cost of only P31.20 per voter.
In 2008, for the ARMM elections, two systems were tried A laptop connected to a scanner that cost P64.25 per voter and the Direct Recording Equipment (DRE) for a total cost of P800 million (P64.25 per voter for the scanner-laptop and P2,094.32 per voter for the DRE). These machines were only leased for a few days. The machines were returned to the supplier after the elections.
In 2010, if the plans of the Comelec go through, not only will the cost be higher than in any other prior election for only leased equipment, I am afraid that this could also result in civil war as happened in Kenya in 2007, when nationwide violence broke out because of a botched election count. Can this happen here?
If only a thousand of the 80,000 machines fail (a failure rate of only 1.25%), we can already expect a lot of violence, And, anyone who knows this country will tell you that with the troubles that will visit the deployment of 80,000 machines for use on one day, that failure rate that I pulled out of thin air may actually be very low compared to what the actual rate will actually be on election day.
What surprises me is why no one – Comelec, civil society, computer experts, government, the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) and other stakeholders in the election process that actually includes all of us — seems to be worried about what will happen in 2010?
Are they all just waiting for the money that they will be making personally from the overpriced budget of P11.3 billion?
Ka-awa-awa naman talaga ang ating bayan!
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hvp 03.10.09)
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